The 5 Most Hilariously Awkward Press Conferences Ever

Being a reporter must be an awful job. If you're doing live interviews, all of your mistakes are captured forever on tape for the endless enjoyment of people like me. I can spend all day watching clips like this one, in which a guy is trying to report on a fire, only to have some crazy redneck pop up behind him, demand he get off his land, and calmly say "fuck" into the camera, using the voice of a 1950s superhero.

But nothing provides more opportunities for live TV awkwardness than sports interviews. The combination of Type A egomaniac jocks and reporters asking unfathomably dumb questions creates moments of cringe-worthy magic that you just can't take your eyes off of.

He does have moments where his pitch black evil can be used for priceless entertainment. In the above video, he was asked what he thought one of his players, Damon Bailey, would look like next year. He started to respond with his normal asshole tone, pointing out that there is no way he could possibly know that without waiting to see him play next year. But in the middle, he interrupted himself and any other questions to grab a drinking glass, turn it upside down, and start rubbing it like a genie's lamp.

"Stop! You're summoning a massive dickhead!"

And he didn't just do it quickly, making his point and moving on. No, he continued doing it for about a minute, just rubbing the piss out of that thing and pausing to gaze into it as if he were reading the future. "I see ... I see Bailey ... the image is fading ..." On and on, he jammed the joke clear into the core of the Earth until even polite laughter wasn't an option anymore, finally ending it with "I see Bailey ... being better." Ah, great. Sarcastic point made. Good show, old chap.

But then the same guy asked his follow-up question: "Do you see him being the playmaker for next year's team?" Every reporter in the room erupts with laughter as Knight's eyes roll up into his head and he reaches for the cup again. Same deal, only this time he ends with "Wait a minute, there's something forming here ... forming. It says ... 'What a shitty question.'"

#4. Tony Stewart Is an Amazing Smartass

For those of you (like me) who couldn't give the most tepid of flickering fucks about racing, that's Tony Stewart -- one of the most sarcastic dickheads in the history of the sport. He publicly mocks the announcers for making things up and blatantly calls them (and many other drivers) stupid. He's also been known to intentionally wreck other drivers as payback for ... well, whatever happens to be pissing him off in that particular moment. But don't let me paint him as a supervillain, because it's a lot more common than you'd think.

To really get how funny that video is, though, you have to understand the background. In 2011, Stewart won the Sylvania 300 in New Hampshire when the guy in front of him ran out of gas with only two laps to go. As weird as it sounds to us "fuck racing" people, it's another thing that's pretty common -- it happened to Stewart the year before in a reverse situation with the exact same driver. In the embedded video, they talk about that parallel quite openly, because, hey, who wouldn't? It's one of those "Did you know Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy?" moments that you just have to call attention to.

That's Stewart, taking first place as the yellow car winds down like a limp dick.

So when they opened up the press box for questions, the first one came from a guy who 1) obviously didn't pay attention to or even watch the race and 2) didn't pay attention to a single second of the press conference he was attending. He asked Stewart about how he knew it was time to make his move in order to take the lead and what strategy and technique he used to pull it off. Without batting an eye, Stewart said in a straight-man, monotone voice:

"I planned it for 280-some-odd laps. I knew he was going to run out of fuel right at that moment, and as opposed to just driving through him and running over him, it just seemed like it may have been an easier option just to turn left and drive around him. So I guess that was my strategy all along. I knew kinda that's what we were going to do, I just had to wait for that opportunity."

#3. Jim Calhoun Gets Real on That Ass

This one isn't funny, but it's extremely satisfying when you understand what's going on. The guy in the video is Jim Calhoun, a Basketball Hall of Fame college coach with a list of credentials that makes most other college coaches look like drooling dumbasses in jean shorts flailing around on a playground court. At the time, he was coaching at the University of Connecticut, so he was considered a state employee ... one of the highest-paid state employees at that, exactly when Connecticut was going through some pretty bad budget problems. The guy asking the questions is Ken Krayeske, an extreme left liberal activist who had a huge hard-on for anything controversial. The guy would fuck a pig into bacon strips if he thought it would promote his agenda.

Krayeske asks right off the bat about his salary, to which Calhoun interrupts, "Not a dime back." He is referring to a request from the governor for state employees to give some of their salary back in order to help cut the state's deficit. Because that's totally logical and not at all stupid. The coach follows it up with an extremely dumb comment about wanting to be able to retire someday, and you are perfectly within your rights to want to punch his face completely off of his rich, entitled fucking head for that. But we can't let that cloud what happens next, because it is a thing of beauty.

"Let me tell you a little Dunkin' about Donuts, kid ..."

Krayeske asks him, "What's the deal with Comcast worth?" to which Calhoun replies, "You're not really that stupid, are you?" No huge story there -- he had a side commercial deal with Comcast, and he was pretty vocal about not disclosing how much he made with them. This part of the video is important because it's when he realized what he was dealing with: an obviously planned confrontation from an activist blogger who wanted to impose on him how to distribute his wealth and spend his money. Because to people like Krayeske, managing other people's money is extremely easy.

And then comes my favorite part of the video. When the coach starts reaming him for being a douche, Krayeske says, "If these guys [the other reporters in the room] covered this stuff, I wouldn't have to." The whole room erupts in groans and one very audible "Oh, give us a break," followed by Calhoun hitting his breaking point:

"Quite frankly, we bring in 12 million to the university. Nothing to do with state funds. We make $12 million a year for this university. Get some facts and come back and see me. [...] Don't throw out salaries and other things; get some facts and come back and see me. We turn over over $12 million to the University of Connecticut, which is state-run. Next question."